


The Adventures of Ms. Pêche

by WennyT



Category: DBSK | Tohoshinki | TVfXQ | TVXQ
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - 1920s, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, F/M, Flappers, Gender Issues, Genderbending, Genderswap, Heterosexuality, I blame this on flapper!Shim's hair in the Something MV, I'm rambling again, Police, Race, Roaring Twenties, Rule 63, Social Issues, Sorry Not Sorry, and not, good auld US of A, was divided only in terms of, where we pretend the
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-10
Updated: 2014-02-10
Packaged: 2018-01-11 17:09:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1175663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WennyT/pseuds/WennyT
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pêche is having a bad day, and half of it is due to that thrice-damned detective, Jung Yunho. The other half is on that snitch who had the bad manners to die on her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Adventures of Ms. Pêche

* * *

 

"Peach, darlin', I needed that column yesterday, you know," Ho Dong, editor of the Daily Tattler, says, leaning against Changmin's cubicle. He sniffs at the air. "The hell you smokin'?"

 

"It's Pêche, you incorrigible man, how many times do I have to tell you," she drawls, blowing a blue smoke ring in his direction. "Smells like the bee's knees, doesn't it? And the column is already on your desk."

 

"Smells like what my pa used to shovel outta the barn, is what it is," he returns, frowning. "I don't pay you to sit around to show those long gams off, get back to work."

 

"I am working," Changmin returns crossly. "I'm waiting for my snitch. For the speakeasy story you’ve been yammering about. He's late."

 

"Tell it to Sweeney," Ho Dong braces his hands on his hips, scowling. "Git off that ass, kiddo, and start hammering away at that type writer. Sun ain't down yet."

 

"Ugh, you're impossible." Changmin stands, snuffing her cheroot out. Fluffing her curls absentmindedly, she stands, reaching a hand out for her overcoat. "Fine. I'll just mosey over to the jazz club he usually is at. He’s likely too corked to come here."

 

"See that you do that," Ho Dong trots along behind her, diminutive in comparison as Changmin is wearing heels today. Usually her height depresses her, but not today. It intimidates her boss enough that he lets her keep her job (because she's good at it, darn it, and she's his best reporter) and the harassment from the other boys in the office to a minimum. "I don't wanna hear you gate crashing anything or gettin' into trouble now, ya follow?"

 

"Yeah, yeah, I won't, love you oodles," Changmin calls over her shoulder, knowing it will bring a reluctant blush to the cheeks of her grouchy boss. "Won't even go near any trouble, don't you worry your head about it."

 

* * *

 

 

Barely fifteen minutes later in a jazz club four streets over and Changmin is already regretting her parting remark to her boss. Would not even go near trouble, indeed.

 

The troubling (pun intended) thing was, trouble usually finds her, instead of the other way 'round. And it has certainly found her again, seeing how she was surrounded by at least five cops, all very intent on questioning her; and one very dead snitch, currently lying beside the counter some distance away, body pumped full of bullets.

 

"What is this, gentlemen?" She leans back against the countertop and gifts them with her most charming smile, while crossing a leg over the other. Hopefully her God-given assets will help her in wriggling out of the questioning. Ho Dong would have a fit if he hears about this. "Am I in the process of being taken in for questioning?"

 

It works, somewhat. Three of them flush red to their collars, and one cannot seem to remove his eyes from her legs, flattered remarkably by the cut of her new dress. The remaining one looked unreasonably stoic though. Pity, because out of all of them, he is the only one tall enough to look at Changmin in the eye, and he is not that bad looking either, if one likes patrician noses and bladed cheekbones and full bottom lips.

 

"No, ma'am," he says, cordially enough, "my name is Detective Jung," and here he sticks out a hand to shake hers, "Yunho Jung, ma'am, my colleagues and I just want to ask you some questions, on the account of you claiming that you were here to meet the victim, after all."

 

"Detective, is it?" Changmin purrs. "You can call me Pêche."

 

"Is that your real name, ma'am?" Detective Jung does not appear to be affected by Changmin's bedroom voice, although the cop standing next to him visibly gulps and sticks a finger under the neck of his uniform. "State your real name, please."

 

"My name," Changmin replies coyly, smoothing out an imaginary crease on her dress, and criss-crossing her legs the other way. "Is Pêche."

 

Yunho does not blink. "This is standard police protocol, ma'am. We're required to note down the names of all persons of interest."

 

Changmin purses her lips in annoyance, and gives in with ill grace. “It’s Shim Changmin,” she snaps, tilting her head back to look down at the detective with chilly hauteur. His colleagues are all but panting like the dogs they are, but here he is, cool as he pleases and acting all civilized.

 

Changmin wants to break something and she does not know why.

 

“Ms. Shim, then,” he nods down at his notebook, and looks up, straight at her face and nowhere else. His gaze reminds Changmin of the stern school mistress of the Catholic prepatory school her mam sent her to on her dead da’s money, and she resists the urge to straighten from her elegant sprawl and tidy her hose.

 

“What is your relationship to the victim?”

 

“No relationship,” she drawls, re-crossing her legs again, and one of the cops still flushed red, blushes even further. That is more like it. “I meet him regularly around to get information out of him.”

 

“Information for?” That got the uptight bluenose to up the intensity of his glare, which in turn shows off how lushly his eyelashes frame those glowering eyes. Why are all the pretty ones either taken or bulls, Changmin will never understand.

 

“For my stories, detective.”

 

“You’re a writer?” The look on Yunho’s face is so skeptical that Changmin feels like breaking a bottle of moonshine over his head. She will do it in a heartbeat if it will not end up with him and his cronies escorting her to their damned station.

 

“I’m a reporter.” She corrects, trying to keep her displeasure from leaking into her voice. The victorious gleam in Yunho’s eye tells her she is not quite that successful, and she resists the urge to scowl.

 

“With which paper?” Now his pen is poised over his notebook again, and he raises both eyebrows at her. Changmin resists the impulse to slap them off his stupidly handsome face, and offers a curt, “the Daily Tattler.”

 

“That’s a gossip rag,” comes the disapproving response, and Changmin just loses it, because- the nerve! She had fought so hard for Ho Dong to hire her— who cares if it is just gossip- it is _her_ job— of all the— how dare _he_ judge—

 

“Even gossip rags need reporters to gather their gossip,” she hisses, and it is poisonous enough for that—that _punk_ of a ’copper to take a step back. He holds his hands up, in a probable attempt to calm her, and the sight of that take-it-easy stance just infuriates her even more.

 

“Whoa, ma’am, there’s no need to—”

 

She ignores him, and his useless, spluttering comrades, who are blustering as well, even though two of them are still directing their words at her legs and her chest. Men are such pigs.

 

“I have had enough,” Changmin snaps out, shrugging on her overcoat, movements made jerky in her anger. How dare he sound disapproving when he does not even know the slightest— she is a person too— how dare he!

 

“If you need more _information_ , you—you—you—” it doubtless is not the wisest course of action to insult a goddamned detective when he has handcuffs and a gun hanging off of his belt, but “—you _rube_ , you can come to the gossip rag to question me.”

 

“Now,” she snarls, glaring hard at Yunho and all but ignoring the gibbering idiots ringed behind him, chin lifting in chilly hauteur, “am I free to go, detective, or are you going to drag me to the shoplifter’s clubhouse?”

 

There was a pause, and Changmin indulges in a fantasy of herself grabbing Yunho’s goddamned sidearm and shooting him in his goddamned head for being such a goddamned pig. It gets cut short too soon by a carefully measured, “you are free to go” from the pig in question, despite the protesting noises the other pigs that came with him were making.

 

Changmin does not deign to offer him an answer. She holds her head up high and sweeps past them, cool as a cucumber, all her energy focused on keeping the haughty expression on her face, while her hands ball into fists inside the pockets of her overcoat.

 

Looks like she will have to take the long route back to the Tattler’s office. Ho Dong does not like it when she brings her rage to work.

  

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> Title inspired by how a lot of silent films in that era were named "The [optional descriptive word] Adventures of So-and-so". Content inspired by the Roaring Twenties vibe of TVXQ's Something MV for their TENse album. And of course, Shim Changmin's flapper girl hairstyle. 
> 
> This is an experiment of sorts. Due to the colossal amount of effort and research that went into it, it will stand as a one-shot for now, unless there is sufficient interest, because believe me, this was one hard motherfucker to write. 
> 
> Comments and constructive criticism are, as always, very much appreciated.


End file.
